Astrolabe
by orange crush
Summary: ...Who could love a passing breeze ? No matter how warm, so matter how sweet, no matter how far it blows." (Drabbles on the ever-infamous Capt. Jack Sparrow....) UPDATED 928
1. Miss Swann

"He keeps things closer ta' the vest, now."

Truer words were never spoken, she often thought to herself. Oh, it was easy enough to get a score of jokes or tale out of him; a half-finished concoction of truth, boasting, and his own darkly vivid imagination; but try and get a scrap of clear honesty out of the man. Sometimes he appears up out of nowhere with a new scar, and sits at the head of the Turner's table; but he never sees fit to explain. He just watches everything with dark, shell-like eyes, eats like a horse, and says nothing that doesn't need saying.

Will is easier. Will is a open book lying on a very clean table, with a stone on both sides of it to keep the wind from mussing the pages. Will is written in black ink. No. Will is _printed_. It's that transparent. Jack could not be contained in a book that way. Maybe a packet of smudged old letters; in a chest at the bottom of the deep. Maybe nothing at all.

Is that why I picked him ? She wonders once, a little horrified at the idea. Is that why I married Will, to read him on quiet evenings, and to set him down again ? Because he will never make me guess at anything, he will always tell me the truth, up front. Is that all I really wanted from the man ?

No. She understands now. She loves him because he is constant, and real, and has never tried to be anything other than what he is, good or bad. He is a rock to build a life upon. And she does not love Jack Sparrow, and could not, she tells herself forcefully, because who could love a passing breeze ? No matter how warm, so matter how sweet, no matter how far it blows.


	2. Lady Fate

Life, it seems, was not always in its most forgiving mood. It had a tendency to beat the spirit out of lesser men; and snip short the lives of those who dared it. Fate chose princes, after a fashion. It decided who would be leaders of men, and who would pump the bilges and dream of a better life. One rode the tailwinds of life as one rode the sea : carefully, and with extra provisions. Jack often imagined Lady Fate to be a tall, dark-haired woman, lovely and proud; with one hand always ready to dole out a hearty slap. In point of fact, Lady Fate had recently taken on Elizabeth's visage in his mind; as if her charming person served to remind him of the violence she still reserved, as most women, the right to distribute.

Jack was lucky. There was no denying that life had surely seen him in the cradle and favored the bright-eyed, dribbling infant. Men who wished him ill were forever being knocked unconscious by a falling signpost, a thrown horseshoe, a well-placed chamber pot. He'd sent an attacker to his death by flinging a spoon at him once; as it happened, it caused him to stumble backwards off of a rooftop, spoon bouncing merrily off of his forehead as he hit the ground. Ironically, fate's love for Jack was one-sided. He made his own luck, or attempted to, and scorned the idea that destiny was responsible for his immense intelligence and dashingly disreputable good looks. But he made some concessions.

By virtue mainly of self-preservation exceeding all other virtues, Jack tried very hard not to tempt fate. He had found his earthly luck, and it was the Pearl. His treasure, if anything could ever be called that. His hope for the future; his wings. _Stay with the Pearl_, life whispered in his ear, _and I'll lay the riches of man at your feet_. _Stay with the Pearl_, _and you'll always be free_. Mostly it told him variations on that; and mostly, he listened.

It was an easy task, regardless. For the Pearl he loved, beyond life itself. Beyond gold and silver, beyond the love of woman and the glory of fame. And unlike the other females who drifted in and out of his sights like seabirds wheeling overhead; the Pearl and Jack loved each other as equals.

Unfortunately for both of them, the blasted man was apparently _meant_ for trouble.


End file.
